Rike-Khokholok: Tales

Charles Perrault 1628–1703 - a French writer of fairy tales, poet, and critic of the classical era. Born in Paris into the family of a judge of the Paris parliament. The whole world knows Charles Perrault as a wonderful storyteller,... however, his inclination towards literary creativity did not manifest itself very early, and for some time it was more of a pastime than a serious, profound engagement. Charles followed in his father's footsteps: he became a lawyer, then a tax collector, and later a clerk for his brother, architect Claude Perrault. While studying at college, Perrault wrote poems, many of which were very popular. However, he considered his poem in the comic style The Walls of Troy, or The Origin of Burlesque 1653 as the beginning of his literary career. The work of the budding writer caught the attention of one of King Louis XIV's ministers, Jean Colbert. Thanks to his patronage, Charles Perrault was appointed secretary of the Academy of inscriptions and fine literature. After Colbert's death in 1683, he lost both this position and his literary pension. But this did not stop the writer; he continued to work on literary texts, wrote poems, and began composing fairy tales. In 1697, he published the collection Tales of Mother Goose, or Stories and Tales of Times Past with Morals. The basis of Charles Perrault's literary fairy tales were plots of folk tales that the writer heard in his childhood from his wet nurse. The fairy tale Rike-Khokholok was composed by Perrault himself, and soon its plot became the basis for fairy tale works by other authors. At that time, fairy tales were considered a low genre, so Charles Perrault published them under his son’s name, Perrault d'Armancourt. Charles Perrault laid the foundation for the fairy tale tradition; his tales significantly influenced the works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. There are many translations of Tales of Mother Goose, so you can find several variants of the same fairy tale's title: Rike-Khokholok, Rike with a tuft, Khokhlik, etc. This collection presents the translation by I.S. Turgenev 1867.